Intel Announces Full Lineup of Kaby Lake Processors for iMac, MacBook Pro, and More

[MacsRuleOthersDrool]

The new Macs are already obsolete less than two months with an announcement like this. Then again, Apple couldn't wait any longer. Expect updates in March for the MacBook Pro. Apple should have just said, we are waiting on Kaby Lake, give us until March, it will be worth it. Then again, who am I to talk, I am not even in the market for a new Mac. But for those who just spent 4 grand, this probably leaves a bit of a bad taste, since buyers in March will be getting a better deal just for waiting a bit longer.

That's why you have to do Research BEFORE you buy; particularly in the fast-moving "tech" space.

And it's why I suggested that a friend of mine wait on replacing her 2009 MBP until Kaby Lake's came out.
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I thought it happened a few times, but I don't have any numbers in front of me. At least they used to upgrade things a lot quicker than they do now.

Moore's Law was still in effect, then.

 

[patseguin]

I just bought a Mini because I was tired of waiting and needed one since my MBP is on it's way out. Honestly, it's doing the trick...for now

I thought about that too since my MBP is showing its age and I have a nice 4K display. I don't think the current Mini can do 4K though right?

 

[havenyoung]

Does anyone know if Kaby Lake are good enough to still support the 4 TB3 ports and drive the same amount of monitors of the current generation with external graphic cards?

I want to have the option back for a 15" Macbook Pro without external graphic cards for more battery efficiency, improved stability and less stuff on a board that could break

So far all announced 45W quad-core H-series have only HD630 graphics. Iris Pro is nowhere to be found on the current Kaby Lake lineup. An iGPU 15" seems more and more unlikely.

 

[ThisBougieLife]

I thought about that too since my MBP is showing its age and I have a nice 4K display. I don't think the current Mini can do 4K though right?

It can only do it at 30 Hz which is crap.

 

[Sasparilla]

It's good to remember, there was no die shrink with this CPU release. On high end CPU's (quad core desktop CPU's) there's virtually no performance difference when they're clocked identically - iMac isn't going to get much benefit here, its a refresh of Skylake.

For laptops and low power applications you get some benefits....but this isn't a groundbreaking CPU release. The next one will take the transister size down to 10nm from 14nm....but as alot of folks have been noticing with quadcore i7's there isn't alot of benefit with running the latest couple of generations (not like the performance jumps we used to get).

That said, Apple needs to get off their butts and either update or officially kill off the mini and Pro if they're not going to update them so the users know they need to abandon Apple for their PC needs in these areas. (saying that as a multi-Mac user who would buy a quad core mini refresh or a real desktop Pro)

 

[MacsRuleOthersDrool]

Why does Apple have to use mobile chips in everything they make now? I already have a nice 4K display and would love a new Mac Mini with a nice desktop class CPU in it.

In the Mac mini, the answer is simple:

Heat.

 

[dBeats]

Over the past 3 years, Apple has brought out a new ARM chip that was sometimes 100% faster than the previous generation. From A7 to A10 there was a mind blowing amount of speed added. Intel is late on their new chips and they're 65% faster in specialized situations only...Yet Apple can't innovate and Intel can't do anything wrong...Trolls go HOME.

 

[n8236]

So I just read a little more about the chips for the 15" MBP. Will there really be a noticeable difference here? The article makes it sound like it, but besides efficiency, the performance gains don't seem to be anything special. Kinda sucks since I got my 15" MBP a couple weeks ago, but considering CPU wise that's barely faster than the CPU from 2 generations before it, I doubt I'll be missing much when new ones are announced. Anyone with more knowledge chime in por favor.

I want to know the same. I literally got my tbMBP yesterday....wth

 

[pier]

Everyone ITT hoping for Apple to use these chips without realising there's no improvement in performance.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/intel-core-i7-7700k-kaby-lake-review/

The biggest improvements over the years have been in the integrated GPUs and power consumption.

 

[nt5672]

The mini with a low powered 13 inch laptop chip. This mentality is exactly what is wrong with Apple today.

 

[Val-kyrie]

When can we expect a quad core in the 13" and hopefully the Mac mini?

The earliest would be Q3 2017 if AMD can offer an appropriate solution or else 2018 with Intel's CoffeeLake.

 

[marty11]

iMacs haven't changed prices In years.

MacBooks hadn't either.

 

[TechZeke]

So far all announced 45W quad-core H-series have only HD630 graphics. Iris Pro is nowhere to be found on the current Kaby Lake lineup. An iGPU 15" seems more and more unlikely.

The iGPU-only 15" experiement is dead, as evident by the fact that Apple didn't make an iGPU-only 2016 TB 15" even though Iris Pro Skylake chips are available. Intel simply couldn't keep up with dGPUs, and there was very little adoption of Iris Pro by PC manufacturers. IIRC, the last roadmap showed that Intel doesn't even plan to release an Iris Pro CPU for Kaby Lake.

 

[Analog Kid]

According to Intel, Kaby Lake will bring "double digit productivity performance increases" of up to 20 percent for gaming notebooks and 25 percent for desktops, compared to 2013 Haswell chips from Intel's prior release cycle.

For all the people complaining about lack of updates, this is why. 20-25% over 4 years is about 5% improvement per year. On average, if you have a workload that took an hour to run last year, it will take 3 minutes less this year.

Intel hasn't even released new Skylake chips for Mac Pro, let alone Kaby Lake.

Intel prices aren't falling, so system prices won't fall.

IMO, Apple is taking the right approach here-- don't take on the expense of a design spin unless there's a customer benefit to deliver.

I used to refresh hardware on a regular schedule for performance reasons, now it's just when something needs to be replaced.

 

[leftoverbacon]

Whar my Mac Pro!

 

[Ries]

Over the past 3 years, Apple has brought out a new ARM chip that was sometimes 100% faster than the previous generation. From A7 to A10 there was a mind blowing amount of speed added. Intel is late on their new chips and they're 65% faster in specialized situations only...Yet Apple can't innovate and Intel can't do anything wrong...Trolls go HOME.

They went from mind blowing slow compared to a laptop CPU to somewhat slow compared to a laptop CPU. That is not a hard feature to do.

 

[truthertech]

The new Macs are already obsolete less than two months with an announcement like this. Then again, Apple couldn't wait any longer. Expect updates in March for the MacBook Pro. Apple should have just said, we are waiting on Kaby Lake, give us until March, it will be worth it. Then again, who am I to talk, I am not even in the market for a new Mac. But for those who just spent 4 grand, this probably leaves a bit of a bad taste, since buyers in March will be getting a better deal just for waiting a bit longer.

And in a few months there will be another new processor and so on. And guess what, there's already exciting things rumored for the next iPhone and I just got a great new iPhone 7 for Christmas, should I have waited??? LOL. The 7 is a great phone and I would have gone without a lot of great new features for a year and so on. There's always a better model around the corner and if that makes you feel bad because of what you already bought, you are doomed to feeling bad the rest of your tech life. Better to buy what is going to meet your needs for a reasonable period of time at a price you can afford, and not worry that a newer model comes out.

 

[djcerla]

Yes, they will come in the spring.

(I hope, as I just sold my brand new MBP 15" to an hefty markup to an impatient guy).

 

[n8236]

Barely though. It does seem like we are very close to the top end of the silicone architecture though. It's been very minor speed increases for years now and not much in the way of improvements in multi threading and cores in general. At least that's what it seems like to me.

I agree w/ this statement based on personal observations. I've been on almost half a dozen MBPs and my last one was from 2012, which is still very fast.

 

[dBeats]

They went from mind blowing slow compared to a laptop CPU to somewhat slow compared to a laptop CPU. That is not a hard feature to do.

If you put a laptop CPU in your mobile phone it will last for 10 minutes before the battery dies. So I guess double and tripling the speed and efficiency of a mobile CPU while keep the drain rate nearly constant is janitor work huh?

 

[Ries]

You won't see more than 16GB until next gen most likely.

Kaby Lake does not support LPDDR4.

And Apple would need LPDDR4 support to put 32GB. There are no 16GB LPDDR3 modules due to density, where as with LPDDR4 there are.

And no way will Apple move backwards to DDR4.

The only thing LPDDR3 has over DDR4 is standby time (lid closed). DDR4 is faster and consumes about the same power in the active state.

 

[Wowereit]

Na. The CPU's are good now but Apple are waiting on the right GPU's...

Apple should disconnect release cycles of 13" and 15" MBP again to avoid such issues.

 

[Ries]

If you put a laptop CPU in your mobile phone it will last for 10 minutes before the battery dies. So I guess double and tripling the speed and efficiency of a mobile CPU while keep the drain rate nearly constant is janitor work huh?

Power drain doesn't scale linearly with frequency. A 100Mhz drop can easy mean 25% power savings. Also geek bench are small loops running in the L1 cache, try throwing a 10MB data set at it at see it crumble.

 

[Altis]

Everybody here is really negative, but I'm a huge Apple fan and regardless if Apple is slow to updating their Macs, Macs are still everyone's preferred desktop machine.

Macs are fantastic mobile computers (my favorite) but I much prefer Windows/Linux desktops.

iMacs seem like way too many compromises in a form factor that requires none.

 

[Glassed Silver]

Everybody here is really negative, but I'm a huge Apple fan and regardless if Apple is slow to updating their Macs, Macs are still everyone's preferred desktop machine.

Oh I can tell you why that is!

We've all been paying the "Apple tax" for years, some even a decade or more than that and gladly so as we got a very decisive return on that premium.

Better OS, a solid ecosystem, integration that stood unparalleled, innovative desktop features, etc...

However, as time moved on many of us began to see that the heavy lifting shouldn't be done on a Mac, but a Windows PC as long as Apple is in their delusion of Macs merely distracting them from their cash cow iPhone.

They can cry about focus all they want, it doesn't fly if offering the whole vertical lineup for its integration has been their thing for so long now.

So buyers like me are beginning to buy Windows machines for everything that needs higher performance and either keep old Macs alive with updates (if they are old enough.... Not possible on many current models anymore. OH THE "GREENNESS") or buy low-end Macs (at substantial markups) for the everyday tasks like writing documents, checking emails, messaging, etc ...

So in a way you are right, I still prefer the Mac, but my reasoning and budgeting has changed tremendously in recent years.

Glassed Silver:mac